Heroes – episode 20

Man, the future sucks. I’m glad I don’t live there. I’ve got to give it to Tim Kring, though: a lot of this episode, despite the full beards and coke bottle glasses, makes sense. I’m kind of ashamed of some of my analyses from the last round.

Spoilers!

Hiro, five years in the future, meets Future Hiro (or “Mirai no Hiro”, if you prefer), gets arrested by Matt Parkman, who now is one of the higher-ups in Nathan Petrelli’s New World Order.

Let’s see what everyone’s doing in the future!

Nathan: President of the United States of America, enlists Mohinder to carry out genocide … or does he?

Mohinder: Replete with a beard and near-coke bottle glasses, Mohinder is the official geneticist of the White House. He determines that powers cannot be cured and that genocide isn’t exactly a moral option.

Matt: High up in the DHS, Matt seems to be a hard nosed member of the Party, intent on bringing powered people down (they don’t seem to have a euphemism for these people).

The Haitian:Matt’s sidekick.

Mirai no Hiro: Terrorist; constant pointer-out of Matt’s obvious mental deficiency. Hiro has been trying to track the perfect date to go back into the past so that he can get the Cheerleader saved, and thus the world.

Bennet: Chair of the powered underground railroad. His associate is none other than Hana Gitelman (AKA Wifi, who hasn’t been seen since she was introduced).

Niki: Free of Jessica (and apparently DL and Micah), Niki wears a black wig and dances erotically. Her boyfriend is someone that we all know and love.

Claire: Thought to be dead, Claire is actually working in a diner. Only Bennet knows this.

Peter Petrelli: Sad about blowing up New York back in the day, Peter Petrelli is more broody than ever before. He is involved with Niki and sometimes talks to Mirai no Hiro. Nathan blamed Sylar for what Peter actually did.

Sylar: Remember how I said that Nathan was the President of the United States of America? Yeah, turns out it’s actually Sylar using Candace’s power. That’s pretty good story tellin’ right there.

From those character positionings, you can piece together the story of this episode (and, seeing as I don’t know if anyone reads the Heroes posts, I doubt that you’d go to me for my summaries of the episodes, particularly as they’re almost always a week past their date).

So I got confused by all of this time travel paradoxicality and whatnots. I have written a story involving time travel in the past, but it was time travel to the past and I used the conceit that whatever has happened stays happened. So, if Sylar had never killed Claire in this continuity, why is it that Sylar survived a stab to the where ever on Explosion Day? Obviously Hiro isn’t supposed to be the same Hiro as Future Hiro, because otherwise Future Hiro would have the memories of Hiro and know how things are supposed to happen … and fail. So we’ve got this Hiro who will have some sort of ability to stab our friend Sylar. Which of course is pointless if Peter Petrelli explodes. On the other hand, we won’t have Sylar, who is … what … a sociopath? I don’t know, he’s some kind of -path, being able to impersonate the President of the United States of America for no other reason than to … I don’t know … kill Peter Petrelli? I’m going to have to assume that he steals the powers of the people who are sent away for re-education. I also think that everyone will have seen the Fire versus Ice (or Red versus Blue) symbolism present in the final showdown.

We won’t get to see that show. We’ll get to see the true wind down over three (hopefully) epic episodes to come. Quite how Matt didn’t see through Sylar’s presidential scheme is beyond me, but he’s probably got some kind of psychic inhibitor or something, I don’t know. Technically Sylar could kill his entire cabinet and just get all of their powers and turn everyone else’s powers off, but who knows? Let’s just hope that they crush Future Hiro’s dead brain so that Future Sylar doesn’t learn time travel and team up with Past Sylar and then … oh dear, I think my head just exploded.